That’s very pretty – I’m reminded of a time when I was snorkeling and admiring such a reef and unaware that the tide was going out until I realized that the creatures were getting pretty close to impaling me.

On Australia’s Great Barrier Reef a close relative of that metazoan (the “crown of thorns” starfish – which looks very pretty) is busy munching its way through the underpinnings of its ecosystem because humans have provided it with the means of being a top predator.

Pretty to look at, bad news if you are a coral. Please stop substituting pretty pictures for ecological truth.

timothya1956@#8: “ecological truth”? WTF is untruthful about this picture? If you click through to the Echinoblog, you’ll see that it’s from an article on “sea urchin barrens”, with bonus allusions to Star Trek.